I would like to post now and then pointers to documentation material (tutorials, video etc) that I find well above the average quality, concerning the general topic of internet security and networking, but nothing to do directly with IPFire. Would this be OK? If yes, in which category? Uncategorized?
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No news good news, I guess.
I will post here a link to a YouTube playlist not related at all to the IPFire project. However I believe this community will find this resource quite useful and indirectly helpful in the use of IPFire. If the IPFire people deem necessary, please feel free to remove all this thread.
This playlist gives a fantastic overview of the entire OSI network stack, from the physical layer to the application layer. This comes form Ben Eater which is very a competent engineer and a superb teacher. In particular he likes to start teaching from the lowest layer, for example he has two more playlists where he build a computer from scratch, hardware first and then software.
In this playlist, the last video is a bit more independent from the rest and it is particularly useful because, using the recent Facebook outage as a central theme, he explains how the entire DNS and BGB work and how they glue together the entire internet architecture.
The rest of the playlist should be followed from the first video to the last, but each video is relatively short and therefore perfectly digestible.
If you are not aware of Ben Eater work and you do not have already a deep understanding of the inner working of the entire internet stack, you will be glad to have spent your time watching these videos.
Patience 
I would suggest to collect a section of introductions and tutorials about general networking and other topics on the wiki. Everyone can edit and enhance the list then.
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Maybe begin here?
@cfusco - speak up if you need help getting started.
EDIT:
FYI - I did not actually add this Wiki Page. It just an example I created in 10 seconds!
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@jon Perfect, I will use the page you just created. Thank you
I have problems logging in the wiki. 500 error response.
I think there was a problem with the IPFire authentication server because other services could also not be logged in to.
However it looks like everything is back up now.
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I changed the title of this post to better clarify my question, for similar questions in the future. I created the wiki page as suggested by @jon and @ms My inclusion criteria is to add only links to material that is of above average quality, including official documentation, high level of clarity, above average attention to detail, not in the top of a google search etc.
Please feel free to add/delete links, if in your opinion the modification follows this simple, though subjective, criteria.
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I acknowledge your idea.
From time to time there are questions in the community which can partly solved by links to basic materials. A repository of those links helps much.
Your quality criteria can be held easily, I think. Due to the editing possibility for all registered users the maintence should be no problem.
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Okay. I generally like this. However, this is now a loose collection and most stuff is probably not very relevant to people who just want to use IPFire at all.
Can I maybe suggest to cut the page into a couple of different sections?
Section A should be must reads. Basic information about how subnetting works, some basic security guidelines. Things that people who have a day job in IT should not need to read any more, but are a good starter for beginners or just a good resource to refresh your knowledge.
Section B should then maybe have some more advanced stuff. However, I think that we should add those links to the pages on the wiki that they refer to where possible. For example some further reading on IPS should be in the IPS section. iptables, too. There must be some stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else that can go here.
Section C: Development stuff. Maybe this could even be at https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel/links. Stuff that is relevant for development. I do not see why the average user should know about things like this: Logi.cc - Мы говорим о Linux, Windows, Android и Web
Does that make sense?
I really like the idea to add good pointers like those you found to the wiki. Writing a couple of words might help people to find the link in search.
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@cfusco - you did an excellent job writing about why we should watch Ben’s video. Please add something similar to each of the links. (and no, each description can be but does not need to be four paragraphs long! your choice. just something that helps the reader!)
@ms I removed completely what could have been section B and C, and I will try to find the right place for those links in the netfilter and development section of the wiki. Therefore for now, this document is only for newbies and I did add some text to clarify its scope. I also kept the networking subsection with the intent to add more links of different topic, like security in a different subsection.
Please let me know if this is working and any further improvement I could do.
@jon thanks for the encouragement Jon. I followed your advice. The only problem for me is to balance verbosity vs clarity. Please let me know if this works and if I need to make the text more concise.
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Thanks for working on this. Another great resource for ipfire users.
Give me clarity over verbosity any day. I’m a great fan of the bullet point.
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Should the introductory text of a link, go above or below the link? I did structure it above, but upon reding it again, I am not sure it helps. I welcome any suggestion.
For what it’s worth… text above the links works for me.
My only feedback would be the resources for Linux Admin are a little out of date by 20+ years eg: Novell’s IPX protocol (brings back great memories).
RS
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@rjschilt Unfortunately I am not aware of a free book that is more up to date. I will add a text warning that some of that text is outdated, however overall I believe most of the information in that book is still useful. Having said that, If the consensus here will be that the it is more a liability than an asset, I will remove it.
After giving it some more thought… agreed.
There is certainly a lot of Linux resources out there but not much at all in the way of free books.
The book you have linked to is certainly a great starting point for those new to the game.
Once again… great effort and muchly appreciated.
RS
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Thanks, but really not much effort from my part. I think I find the work from Ben Eater so amazing I just wanted others to know about it.
Old thread, but being a newbie to this kind of “stuff”, I need this type of thing. I’m glad it’s a starting point for me to get things figured out and hopefully make things a bit safer for my family.
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